


The Dancing Master

by Rabbit



Category: The Phantom of the Opera (book or movie or musical)
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-11
Updated: 2013-04-11
Packaged: 2017-12-08 04:45:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/757198
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rabbit/pseuds/Rabbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meg just won't let well enough alone, after the events of the movie/musical, whichever. Madame Giry takes matters into her own hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dancing Master

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Farasha Silversand](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Farasha+Silversand).



He wasn't dead, not Erik. A man like him, incapable of life, was surely incapable of death, in any real sense. Madame Giry admitted as much, when pressed on the topic, just before pressing just as instantly that the subject be dropped. Meg tended to press constantly, and her mother was well aware that she kept the Phantom's mask in the little drawer in her bedchamber, under her linens. She did not approve, did Meg's mother, but neither did she punish for it. She kept silent on the topic, and pretended that she did not know what went on in that little blond head of her daughter's when she sat staring into the fire between rehearsals. 

Nonetheless, it troubled her, for a great many reasons. 

Christine still occasionally came to see Meg, to gossip and giggle and talk about her marriage and the child she was expecting and all the sorts of things that girls gossiped about. And it was all well and fine, until, as she inevitably did, Meg asked her about That Night, and about The Phantom. 

Having exhausted her horror and disgust and every other thing she had to say about Erik, to herself and to Meg, Christine clammed up a bit at the mention of his name, and turned her face away. 

"Please, Meg, I don't want to talk about it. I'd just as soon forget that the whole thing ever happened." 

"But Christine..." 

"No, Meg, please. Don't you understand? I'm free now... in a way I've never been before. I'm so happy now..." 

"But don't you wonder what happened to him? Where he went, what he's doing now... if he is still... teaching?"

"Oh no." Christine went horribly pale, and turned her face the other way, "oh heaven, I hope not."

"Christine..." 

"Please, Meg," she was reduced to repeating herself, near to sobbing, "you don't.. You can't understand. I... it's not that I wish any harm on him, not now. But I just can't... I wouldn't wish him on anyone, not even... not even..." She sighed, and gazed imploringly at her friend, "I know, you must have... you must have thought it all terribly romantic, and you must have... oh, I can't say it... I don't want to think that you ever could have harboured..." 

"Oh Christine, I never, I promise!" Meg clasped her hand and squeezed it. All right, maybe she had envied Christine a little, her voice and her glory and... oh all of it, but it was not worth it to admit it aloud. 

"...oh good. " Relief spread across her face with her smile, "Good, but you must believe me... it wasn't worth it. And not just because of... all the horrible, horrible things that happened. It's just that I... oh, I hope you will understand, some day, when you are in love, and married. When someone's happiness is more important to you than anything else in the world."

"I... Oh Christine." And Meg wrapped her arms around her, a little startled that she was trembling badly, "Oh I'm sorry Christine, I shall never mention it again. I'm truly sorry." 

And she never did, but Madame Giry, who always listened when Christine came to visit, knew that her daughter was not convinced. 

Her work was beginning to suffer, at least, so Madame Giry said, insisting that she begin to take up extra practice on her own, late at night, though she did not allow her to use the opera house-- the _Comique_ , where they had relocated after it became clear that the _Populaire_ would not be able to find a new patron. Nonetheless, the old opera building remained, untouched and uninhabited due to the thick shroud of superstition that cloaked it. Any other such building left fallow for so long would have become home to any number of the fetid, _sans domicile_ beggars and lowlifes of the Parisian unwashed and miserable. But not the Opera. It remained silent and empty, and not even the most desperate and jaded toothless old scrounger would so much as sidle up its sagging awnings in search of shelter. Nonetheless, it was not fear in her mother's voice when she told her to go /there/, to practice. 

"Does this matter to you, you silly girl? Do you care, about success in your craft, truly?"

"Oh yes, Mother, more than anything!" 

"What about young men? Don't you want a life like Christine? The Comique attracts many handsome young men, very interested in dancing girls." 

Meg shook her head. "Oh mother... how could I leave you, and the opera? I love Christine... and she certainly seems happy, but whatever she says..." She dug her fingernails into her palms and looked down at her feet, naturally stuck in fifth position, "I am not convinced she's any happier than she was when she was... actually performing. And I wish I could be half as good as she was. If I had even a tenth of her talent..." 

"Good." Madame smiled and tapped her stick on the floor, "Now, no one must see you enter," said her mother, "you must go into the opera in this way, that I will show you." 

Meg did so dutifully, at least once a week, creeping out onto the dark familiar stage, closing her eyes and moving through her routines under the watchful eye of... no one at all, but she liked to imagine, ever so often, that He was watching, her very own Phantom, keeping the time of her feet with the metronome she heard in her head, the occasional tap-tap-tap of the rain outside of the _palais_. 

So when she heard the music for the first time, rising from beneath the floor, it surprised her not at all, but made her smile, and she changed her dance to fit the way the music changed and swelled and grew more strange and wild and rose and rose and yes...

And so she danced, she danced until her feet blistered hard and she didn't particularly care, even when she thought her feet were going to begin to bleed and she had to stop, and the music screeched to a halt. 

"Phantom!? Please? Are you..." She immediately felt ridiculous to have called out to him, but it had to be... Him. There was no one else...

"This... was not my idea, child." His voice was beautiful. She remembered it from his Opera, but that was a memory. It made her shiver slightly. 

"Where are you?" 

He laughed, eerie and strange, as she spun on her aching feet, seeking him out. But he did not appear. 

"In time, perhaps, in time."

"What do you mean?"

"Your mother... speaks highly of you, little Meg. Perhaps you do, in fact, have potential for me. For my dreams... perhaps I was... mistaken... in the proper expression of my music. Perhaps..." 

The angel's voice trailed off, and Meg stretched after it, aching in more than just her bruised toes. 

"Yes. Yessss..." The voice seemed pleased, satisfied, "Oh yes, my dear little Meg. From now on, I shall be your tutor, your Dancing Master. I have a gift for you."

One of the lights flared to life, illuminating a spot towards the edge of the stage-- a box of red, towards which she limped and carefully lifted the lid. Inside were a pair of toe-shoes-- not the generic, pink kind, like the ones she had one, but red as apples and blood, red as death. She took them out delicately, somewhere between terrified to even breathe on them and trembling with nervous excitement. Something about Christine's warning earlier nagged at the back of her mind, but she ignored it. 

"They're..."

"Put them on." 

She did, tossing her old shoes into the darkness negligently. She would wear no other shoes again, if she could at all help it. Costume cues be damned. There was more than one kind of marriage, after all, and more than one sort of dedication. 

"Exquisite." he purred, and her toes curled, throbbing, but in delight.

"And..." she squinted harder into the darkness, and she swore that she could see a shape, or the outline of a shape, standing in the darkness of box five (or the rafters? ) looming there, "...will you teach me to sing?"

"Well see, my dear child. We'll see." 

 


End file.
